The effort done by the ICT4D Collective is impressive: the idea of organizing this first edition of the symposium is only equaled by the massive response of attendants (I counted 33 people in total), coming from (almost) all over the world (I mean it) and many and one disciplines (most interesting part, no doubt). Personal thanks go to Tim Unwin, Marije Geldof and all of the other collective members.

First session took place in Egham, September 14th, 2006, morning. Here come the notes I took on the fly:

Isabella Rega, University of LuganoTelecentres and Social Meanings: a South Africa case study

The (main) hypothesis of the research is whether the social meaning which a community gives to a telecentre strogly affect its (not-) use and the socioeconomic impact of the telecentre in the community.

Infomobilisation (similar concept — if not same — as informational literacy): “helping the community to understand and express its information needs and showing people how they can reach this information through new technologies”

Social meaning: difference on what the (telecenter) designer thinks of a service and what the community that will use thinks of it: same telecenter designed by person in i.e. NYC than the one designed by its user in rural Africa?

Elfneh Bariso, AHEAD/IOEThe Digital Dividend in an Ethiopian context: Ahead’s plan 4 a community college

[disclaimer: actually not a PhD research, but an ongoing project: www.ahead.org.uk]

Main axe: Gender equality empowerment of women. Thus, how gender is implicated in different experiences of women & men in relation to access & use of ICTs and see which they believe are most effective.

Main conluding perspective: Mobile phones seem more relevant than the Internet.

I am professor at the School of Law and Political Science of the Open University of Catalonia,
and researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute and the eLearn Center of that university.
I am also the director of the Open Innovation project at Fundació Jaume Bofill.